How Does Environmental Regulation Cost Affect Green Transformations of Polluting Firms?——Based on the Perspective of Technology Learning and Absorption
How Does Environmental Regulation Cost Affect Green Transformations of Polluting Firms?——Based on the Perspective of Technology Learning and Absorption
This paper investigates the impact of environment tax-for-fees reform on green transformation with firms in high-pollution industries from 2015 to 2021.With a difference in difference research design,the results show that the increase of environmental protection tax leads to substantial increases in firms'R&D spending.Further analysis indicates that an increase in R&D investment does not result in an increase in patentable innovations for high-pollution firms with easily access to external knowledge and high process R&D input.Instead,it is mainly manifested in continuing learning and absorbing existing production technologies from the outside,aiming to achieve green transformation,thereby reducing the pollutant emissions in areas where polluting firms are located.The cross sectional test shows that the increase in R&D spending is more pronounced in SOEs.Overall,the above findings imply that market-driven environmental regulation has played an effective role in green governance,stimulating polluting firms to invest in R&D to expand absorptive capacity rather than to develop new patentable innovations.
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